


Head in the Clouds

by ohanotherday



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Coparenting, Kid Fic, M/M, Mentions of Murder, Misunderstandings, Pining, Pregnancy, Selkies, but he had it coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-09 00:52:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohanotherday/pseuds/ohanotherday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Chuck was younger, he was fascinated by the Becket brothers. They seemingly appeared out of nowhere. One day there was nothing at the top of the cliffs, and the next day, tucked up right next to the edge, was a cozy little cottage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not actually sure what time period this story takes place in. Let’s just pretend it’s a nice little anachronistic, picturesque town on the Alaskan coastline. *Throws confetti.*
> 
> Also, I saw these gems while I was hammering out the plot and whatnot. [This post](http://sweetraleighbecket.tumblr.com/post/73586372533/samsamtastic-philliplight-im-at-the-oregon) and [this post](http://sweetraleighbecket.tumblr.com/post/73586350949/daisyvanhorn-forest-hunk-steffen-norgaard-for) were very inspiring.
> 
> Oh! And the title was inspired by "Sweater Weather" by The Neighborhood. I was so close to picking a title from one of the songs from "The Little Mermaid," but I resisted.

When Chuck was younger, he was fascinated by the Becket brothers. They seemingly appeared out of nowhere. One day there was nothing at the top of the cliffs, and the next day, tucked up right next to the edge, was a cozy little cottage.

The Becket brothers were fisherman, and the things they brought to the market ranged from fish found only in the depths of the sea, to beautiful mother of pearl and abalone, to handcrafted jewelry made from sea glass and shells. They had a lucrative business, and their charismatic nature and craftsmanship were probably the reason behind it.

And the fact that they were both eligible bachelors might’ve also been a factor.  Chuck would roll his eyes every time people got flustered while talking to Raleigh or Yancy, but even he couldn’t deny that they had a certain spark. They were definitely special. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but they just seemed more full of life than anyone he ever met. Yancy and Raleigh couldn’t possibly be any more different than the other—one calm and patient, the other lively and energetic—but they both had that same passion for life, like nothing made them happier than existing in this tiny little village and selling their goods and breathing the crisp, ocean air.

That changed the day Raleigh came back in his boat without Yancy, looking heartbroken and worse for wear. The weather had been rough during the days the Beckets were out at sea. The brothers tended to take their boat out farther than most, but Chuck couldn’t understand how Yancy could just _die_. The brothers were experienced fisherman—they caught fish most people couldn’t get—but that didn’t seem to help the fact that Yancy was still dead, and Raleigh looked more heartbroken than ever.

Chuck would never admit that he tended to wait at the docks, wasting time reading and hoping he might catch a glimpse of Yancy and Raleigh bringing in their haul, but that was how he spent many afternoons.

The stormy clouds lingered while Raleigh trudged up toward his house alone, and he ignored the questions of concerned citizens. “Dead,” Raleigh kept repeating over and over, “he’s dead,” each time people asked about Yancy. Raleigh’s hands hung limp at his sides. His clothes were filthy and clung to his body, and all at once, he looked like he was in the wrong skin. Chuck left after catching a close up glimpse of Raleigh’s face, eyes hollow and blank. He wasn’t the same person, wasn’t the same hero, and Chuck didn’t have time to waste on ghosts.

\---

Despite Yancy’s death, Chuck still grew up to be a fisherman. It wasn’t really an option. His dad fished, the people needed fish, and there weren’t many other jobs. It made sense, and Chuck wasn’t going to let some tale about the dangers of fishing deter him. _The sea was choppy, the wind was rough, the storms were hard._ These were all facts that he learned to accept. Things like Yancy’s death happened because people fucked up. The Becket brothers must’ve gotten sloppy and forgotten these basic truths, and these slipups were what got people killed.

Raleigh still fished, but it seemed like he sold more fish than he should’ve. Chuck wasn’t going to mention it to Raleigh’s face, but he wondered if Raleigh even ate enough. The hauls Raleigh brought in were reasonably sized, but they were almost always equal to what he sold in the markets. Unfortunately, the large sweaters Raleigh wore didn’t help Chuck figure out if Raleigh was wasting away or not under all the layers.

But Chuck didn’t waste his time lurking around Raleigh in the market. Raleigh was practically a hermit. He never socialized much anymore. Sometimes he would visit the tavern, drinking a few beers and pretending to smile before he went back home. He talked enough at the market to make sales, and he was always willing to help build any house or barn or boat, but mostly he stayed all alone in his tiny cottage up on the cliffs.

Sometimes Jazmine Becket would appear, and her impish smirks were enough to remind everyone exactly how much Raleigh had changed. Younger, brighter, and while the shock of Yancy’s death must’ve affected her, it hadn’t taken the same toll on her as Raleigh. Nevertheless, she spent months in the summer with Raleigh, and despite her size, she could fish just as well.

While she was there, Raleigh’s stock of jewelry would increase. Raleigh let Jazmine wear a good chunk of it, and she seemed to glow from all the pearlescent shells. When she left, it seemed like she took the light with her, and Raleigh slowly reverted back to his old ways.

\---

It was just before dusk when Chuck pulled into the harbor. After helping his dad dock the boat and unload the catch, he wandered through the market. Raleigh and Jazmine must’ve spent the day sitting in their booth at the market, as both their faces were slightly sunburned, and Jazmine’s face had a few more freckles than the day before.

Chuck had no need for jewelry or other such finery, but he wandered over to inspect the craftsmanship. Raleigh never started a conversation with him, but he always gave Chuck a nod and watched him warily, as if Chuck might go on about this not being a realistic profession. In Raleigh’s defense, Chuck had made a few remarks in the past about the silliness of making jewelry for a bunch of folks who lived in simple conditions, but today he wasn’t in the mood to make any comments. A fish had snapped at Chuck’s finger earlier during the day, and while it hadn’t left any serious damage, it left Chuck in a sour mood.

Jazmine caught sight of Chuck, but she didn’t spare him a second glance. Instead she pulled Raleigh back into her conversation. “Raleigh,” Jazmine said in a low murmur, “your sweater isn’t warm enough for this type of weather. You should be wearing your furs.”

Chuck furrowed his brow. Raleigh’s current sweater was made of wool, and over that he had an even thicker jacket to block out the wind. The end of summer was approaching soon enough, but surely it wasn’t _that_ cold just yet to need furs.

“I don’t have mine anymore,” Raleigh replied, his shoulders tense.

Jazmine’s eyes widened while her mouth thinned into a line, and she dug her fingers into Raleigh’s arm. “Don’t even fucking joke like that,” she snapped. She punched her brother hard on the shoulder, and it was only then when she noticed Chuck observing them. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned forward. “Oh, I’m sorry, did you want to buy something, or are you just going to stand their intruding on our conversation?”

Chuck rolled his eyes and took a step back. “Nothing worth any value here anyway.”

“Yeah, sure, you keep telling yourself that,” Jazmine scoffed. She nudged Raleigh, and together they started packing up their stuff. “That’s why you keep coming here _every single day_.”

Chuck pursed his mouth. He didn’t care about getting into an argument with Raleigh, even if most ended with Raleigh beating the shit out of him by the end of it, but he had learned to avoid antagonizing Jazmine. She was small, and because of that, the first time he picked an argument with her, Chuck hadn’t expected her to fight like a little demon.

By now Chuck knew better, and he stormed off to the tavern. There he pondered why Jazmine had gotten so upset with Raleigh, but as Chuck gazed out the window, he saw Jazmine and her brother smiling as they walked arm in arm down the street.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Chuck hated running errands for other people, but his neighbors were so tiny and frail and elderly that when his dad mentioned Chuck could be of service, he refrained from rolling his eyes. He wouldn’t mind helping them out in any way possible.

But while the couple appreciated Chuck’s offer, their main request was to send Chuck up the cliff and find Raleigh and ask him to help them do a few repairs around the house and redo the roof. Chuck balked since he could certainly do all that instead of having to go take a trip up the mountain, but Mrs. Cooper just smiled and said she liked Raleigh’s work, that he was so kind to them and he wouldn’t mind doing the labor for free.

The next day when Chuck didn’t see Raleigh at the dock or at the market, Chuck trudged up the mountain toward Raleigh’s home. It wasn’t too difficult of a walk, but there was no paved pathway, just a well-worn path that Raleigh, Yancy, and Jazmine must’ve created. The wildflowers were in bloom, and Chuck admired the effects spring had on the countryside.

When he got to the top of the cliffs, Chuck paused to catch his breath. The wind whipped a little harsher at this altitude, and Chuck quickly wrapped his jacket tighter around him. A few paces away stood Raleigh’s home, smoke puffing out lazily from the chimney. Despite living in the same little town as Raleigh for the last eight years, he’d never had a good reason to visit Raleigh’s house. Up close, he took the time to inspect the outside.

Different odds and ends scattered the yard. Wash basins and lumber and junk metal were the majority of it, but there was a mild sort of organization to it. Some wash basins were filled with dirt and had flowers teeming over. Purple and pink seemed to be the theme, but white flowers and orange ones poked through here and there.

Chuck scratched at his jaw. He was all for people having their little forms of stress relief, and gardening could certainly put people at ease, but planting flowers in scrap metal was definitely a little weird, even for a hermit.

Chuck made his way up the porch, knocked a few times, and waited. And waited some more. He let out a huff and knocked hard three more times, his patience dwindling. He peered into the window, attempting to catch a glimpse of Raleigh, but couldn’t see any sort of movement going on inside the house.

Chuck rolled his neck. He certainly wasn’t going to go all the way back down the mountain without delivering his message. Along the side of the house was more metal scraps, debris and whatnot from wrecked ships, and Chuck moved around it as he made his way to the back of the house.

From the back window, he could see that the stove was on, and Chuck knocked hard on the backdoor. When no movement could be heard, Chuck jingled the doorknob, raising his eyebrows when it proved to be unlocked.

“Raleigh,” Chuck called out. He tentatively opened the door, and all at once warmth and the smell of salt pervaded his senses. “Raleigh,” Chuck called out again. He took a step inside the home, pausing and waiting before continuing.

When he had been peering through the windows, he had to squint to see past the fogginess covering them. He had assumed it was the heat from the fireplace doing that, but as he glanced toward the stove, he was sure the steam had been caused by the number of pots and pans on the stove.

As he walked closer to the stove, his mouth dried out a little, and he could taste the salt on his tongue. Three large pots seemed to be mostly empty, with only a little bit of water and _sand_ sitting on the bottom of each.

Chuck raised his eyebrows. Up on the windowsill over the sink there were more jars of sea salt perched in glass jars. Plenty of people boiled seawater, but the only way to get seawater up here would be if Raleigh lugged gallons of it.

Chuck turned the burners off for those three pots, lest the pots should run out of water and scorch the metal and salt, and decided to peer into the fourth pot. He removed the lid, and a great cloud of steam was released. The liquid inside the pot was red, and once some of the steam evaporated, Chuck could see it was a stew, clams and mussels and various crustaceans making up the majority of it. He picked up a ladle, using it to stir the ingredients and taste it. It burned his tongue, but the stew was spicy and warmed Chuck up.

“Oi, Becket,” Chuck yelled, “your shit’s going to burn if you don’t take care of it.” He placed the lid back on the pot and turned around. Raleigh still wasn’t appearing anywhere, and Chuck shrugged to himself and went to go investigate the rest of the house.

The living room was empty, but on the window sills and bookshelves there was a whole bunch of jewelry and knickknacks. Some he recognized from Raleigh’s booth, but there were some bookshelves filled with different shells and materials just waiting to be worked with.

When Chuck spotted a glass jar filled with pearls, his hand instinctively reached to press up against his own necklace hidden underneath his shirt. It was a silly thing, a trinket for good luck he had gotten years ago from the Beckets, back when Yancy was still alive.

It was just a plain silver chain with a white pearl attached to it. Pearls were supposed to offer protection, give wisdom, and keep kids safe. Or at least that was what Yancy said when he caught Chuck staring at it. Raleigh and Yancy listed off more things about pearls, going into various cultural mythologies, and the way they talked about pearls made Chuck feel like this was something worth having. Chuck had a few dollars on him, but when he started to pull out his wallet, Raleigh just smiled and shook his head. Raleigh told him he was the one who made those ones, and he wouldn’t let Chuck pay for it, instead giving it to him for free.

Chuck leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Becket,” he called out, muttering in a lower voice, “I’m walking through your house like a creep.” His eyes scanned the three doors. “Don’t turn out to be dead.”

He chose the door closest to him, which turned out to be a bedroom. It looked lived in and was a little messy, pictures adorning the walls, but there were still no signs of Raleigh. He knocked on the second door, and when he opened it, it was just an empty bathroom. Anxiety was building in his throat, and as he knocked on the third door, he braced himself that Raleigh just actually might’ve keeled over in his own home.

However, the third room was just as empty as the rest of the house. The bed was neatly made, and Chuck assumed this must’ve been Yancy’s. He opened the closet, and in there were clothes that must’ve belonged to Yancy, but Chuck was sure he had seen Raleigh wearing a few during the last week.

As Chuck left the room, his foot snagged on the corner of a trunk. Chuck bent over to push the trunk back into place, but his hands lingered on the lid. There wasn’t a lock, and even as one part of his conscience told him ‘no, walk away,’ another part screamed ‘open the fucking lid already and see what’s inside. Just fucking do it.’

Chuck couldn’t argue with those sorts of demands, and he took a peek inside the trunk. There were a few sweaters on the top, some bundles of yarn, needles, nothing too interesting. There were a blue sweater half-knitted, but when pushed aside, there was a fur at the bottom. Chuck picked it up, feeling the luxuriousness of it. He stood up so he could see the full extent of it, but after turning it this way and that, he realized it was more like a long cape instead of a coat.

All of a sudden, he felt a little sick and he set the fur down. Most people he knew didn’t own furs and then proceed to hide them away with yarn. They stored their furs properly and wore them whenever it was too cold out. He’d never met a selkie, but he’d heard enough stories about them, about women being so pretty that men stole their furs and hid them away just to keep them. Raleigh had never had a wife—a couple of girlfriends sure, but those had all been women Chuck knew for all his life, so they surely weren’t selkies—but suddenly Chuck wanted to know if this belonged to a living, breathing person. If some poor girl was missing her fur because it was being held hostage in the house of a crazed hermit who lived at the top of a mountain.

Though, it could just as easily be an actual seal’s pelt, since documentation of selkies was few and far between. But Chuck recalled Jazmine mentioning to Raleigh about wearing furs, and he had said he didn’t have his anymore.

The lock to the front door clicked, and Chuck immediately dropped the fur and slammed the trunk shut and stood up. As he exited Yancy’s room, he tried to feel less like a criminal and more like a Good Samaritan. He’d been going through Raleigh’s house just to make sure Raleigh hadn’t died, Chuck told himself.

However, he stopped short when he caught sight of Raleigh, momentarily forgetting about the pelt. Chuck gaped at him before speaking. “What the fuck. Did you fall off the cliff?”

Raleigh glanced up, his hair wet and scraggly. Despite the cold Raleigh must’ve been experiencing, his long johns only were covering his legs. Raleigh was in the process of putting it on all the way, but he paused and left the portion meant for his torso off.

Raleigh scowled at him, his eyes narrowing on Chuck. “I went swimming.” He took a step closer, and his gaze darted at the room behind Chuck. “What are you doing in my house?”

Chuck had the decency to feel completely embarrassed, but he tried not to let it show. He squared his shoulders, ignoring the burning sensation on the back of his neck. “I’m only here so the Coopers, my _neighbors_ , can get your expertise. They want a roof or a thing or…” Chuck shrugged, “something done.”

Raleigh tilted his head. His fingers twitched, but less like they were about to form a fist and more like he was trying to get warmth to circulate through his body. “That doesn’t explain why you’re inside my home.”

“Well I was knocking and you weren’t answering. And the backdoor was unlocked,” Chuck added, as if that absolved him of his trespassing. Chuck widened his eyes. “And since you’re a goddamn hermit, I was just checking to make sure you hadn’t died.”

Raleigh pursed his mouth. “Right. You were just performing a civic duty.”

Chuck clenched his jaw, and this time when he turned red, it was out of anger instead of embarrassment. “Speaking of civic duties, why do you even have pelts? Huh? All locked away in a trunk. You probably are crazy,” Chuck snapped. “Bet you stole it from some poor girl.”

Raleigh sucked in a small breath, and went tense all over. “What?”

It was probably the wrong thing to say, but Chuck didn’t try to backtrack. Instead he tilted his chin upward. “You heard me.” Chuck turned around and headed back for Yancy’s room to reveal the pelt, but before he could reach for the trunk, Raleigh tackled him to the ground and punched him in the face

Chuck blinked from the hit to his eye, seeing stars for a moment. But as soon as he got his bearings, he clenched a fist and punched Raleigh right back. Chuck tried to squirm out of Raleigh’s hold, twisting and turning, but Raleigh followed him and held on. When Raleigh twisted Chuck’s arm backward, Chuck gasped for breath. He tugged hard and Raleigh released him, but in the second it took for Chuck to roll onto his back, Raleigh somehow grabbed a knife. He straddled Chuck’s torso, holding the knife just underneath Chuck’s jaw.

Raleigh raised his eyebrows. “You’re going to get the fuck out of my house,” he ordered calmly. “And you’re not going to come back and go searching through my things like you own the damn place.”

Chuck narrowed his eyes at Raleigh. “Shit, you really are a creep,” he breathed.

Raleigh rolled his eyes, but he managed to grab Chuck by the hair and drag him out of his house.  When Chuck stood up after being shoved off the porch, he was ready to start beating the shit out of Raleigh all over again. But Raleigh had an axe in his hand that had been resting on the porch near a pile of chopped lumber. He was standing very still, but his body was tense and his eyes were murderous.

“Tell the Coopers I’ll be there tomorrow to fix their stuff,” Raleigh said patiently, “that’s not a problem. But if you come back to rummage through my things, I’ll put this axe’s blade in between your eyes.”

Chuck shook his head. He could feel the cuts and bruises already forming, and his mouth tasted like blood. “Something’s wrong with you,” Chuck sneered and turned to make his way back down the mountain. A gust of wind sent the potted flowers fluttering, making it feel like they were laughing at him, and for a second, Chuck wanted nothing more than to rip them all out by their roots.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Chuck didn’t go back up the cliffs, but that didn’t stop him from seeing Raleigh every day for the next week. It wasn’t intentional, since he couldn’t help that he nearly always saw Raleigh leaving the Coopers’ home each day.

He kept his mouth shut about all his accusations he had spewed at Raleigh. There really was no proof Raleigh would go off and steal some selkie woman’s pelt. But Chuck avoided Raleigh as best he could. There was no way to apologize for breaking and entering a home—that he could think of at least—and then rummaging through the owner’s belongings and jumping to impossible conclusions. Chuck liked to think he was a semi rational person. He believed in things he could see, and since he had never seen an actual selkie or a selkie’s pelt in person, who was he to start calling someone a thief.

Now every time Chuck saw Raleigh, he looked like a murderous, nervous wreck. Raleigh’s hands shook and he constantly looked over his shoulder as he walked down the street, jumping and panicking at even the slightest noise. Whenever Raleigh and Chuck made eye contact, Raleigh stared him down like he was mentally preparing for a rabid dog to attack.

The last time Raleigh had acted like that was when Yancy died, and it left a bitter taste in Chuck’s mouth knowing he was causing any unnecessary stress. For all he knew, maybe Yancy had liked wearing fur capes. Maybe he bought one before he died and never got a chance to wear it into town. It would make sense then why Raleigh would keep it in Yancy’s room, hidden away with all of Yancy’s other belongings.

Chuck’s mom’s stuff was still all neatly folded in her dresser drawers. His dad had never bothered giving it away, even though he probably should. And sometimes when Chuck was feeling forgotten and alone when he was younger—his dad always too busy fishing to notice him—Chuck would wrap himself in one of the huge quilts she had made.

It took several days before Chuck decided he should apologize, but by then Raleigh had finished all of the Coopers’ requests.

Chuck waited at the docks in the morning, and he visited the market in the afternoon, but he never caught a glimpse of Raleigh. There was never even smoke coming from the chimney of Raleigh’s house.

Chuck didn’t plan on going back up to the top of the cliffs, and he tried to figure out how best to point out to other people about Raleigh’s absence without sounding suspicious.

As Chuck moved about the kitchen that night, boiling some potatoes and searing a couple of steaks, he wondered if his father might know. His dad and Raleigh were friendly, sometimes sharing a beer at the tavern every now and then.

Max plopped down in front of Chuck, whining for the cuts of beef that Chuck had been heating up for him. Chuck dumped the meat into a bowl and crouched down. He smiled while Max slobbered all over his food. “Hungry much?”

“Steaks ready yet?”

Chuck glanced up, noticing his dad entering the kitchen. “Almost.”

Herc nodded. “Smells good.”

When the steaks and potatoes were plated, Chuck fiddled with his fork for a moment before cutting a few large slices.

“The Coopers’ house looks decent again,” Chuck remarked.

“Yep,” Herc agreed. “Raleigh did a good job. New roof and new fence.” He mashed up some potatoes with his fork and scooped them up. “He’s a good kid.”

Chuck raised his eyebrows, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Sure, and that’s why he suddenly disappeared.”

“Oh that?” Herc took a sip of water. “He mentioned to me he would be gone for a week.

“A week!?” Chuck sputtered. He let out a scoff. Raleigh skipping town _wasn’t at all suspicious._

“Yeah,” Herc shrugged. “Said he had to go see some people.”

\---

A week turned into two weeks, and by the time Raleigh came back, Chuck had forgotten his desire for repentance.

When Raleigh did come back, a woman accompanied him. Chuck found out through his coworkers that her name was Mako, and while she was nice enough, the whole situation seemed fishy. The first day Raleigh was back in town, he wore that blue sweater Chuck had seen from the trunk in Yancy’s room. The finished product looked good, but it matched the tips of Mako’s hair, and within a couple of days, Mako had her own matching blue sweater as well.

But her presence seemed to make Raleigh calm once again. She always stayed near his side, even went fishing with him, and was always with him in the market. They whispered and spoke quietly with each other, always talking. Sometimes in English, sometimes in Japanese, a few times in French, but when they talked in French, it always ended with Mako jumbling up the words and Raleigh repeating them correctly until they got bored and decided to jump back to Japanese and English. They spoke in other languages too, but Chuck hadn’t traveled enough of the world to know which ones exactly. But he could still tell when it was Mako or Raleigh teaching the other new words, one trying to be patient while smiling, and the other huffing and learning determinedly.

When Chuck did build up the nerve to visit Raleigh’s booth at the market, Mako watched him attentively. She kept her gaze on him like a hawk, eyes darting toward his hands every time they even so much as touched the table. When he tried riling Raleigh up, Mako jumped into the conversation, only being settled by a quick shake of the head from Raleigh.

So Chuck left it alone. If she was going to be so protective of Raleigh, certainly she didn’t want Chuck’s help.

\---

Chuck had steered a boat by himself before. It wasn’t that difficult, but he was also used to having his dad nearby, throwing around orders and advice. But the day prior his dad had gone and busted his arm. A cage had whacked him straight in the elbow and sent him flying off the deck. With a bit of quick thinking, the rest of the crew had managed to get him back before he sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Herc was lucky, and Chuck made sure his dad would stay at home until he was healed.

But today, Chuck wished he’d stayed at home too. The weather had been overcast in the morning, but by mid-afternoon, storm clouds had settled over them. The waves kept rocking the boat fiercely, and it was becoming hell just trying to drive the ship back home. When the rain poured down, Chuck wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry. Herc would have a field day telling him how dumb Chuck was for making him stay at home.

Waves crashed on the starboard side, and the boat lurched and abruptly stopped. Chuck fell to his side, quickly standing up to regain control of the boat, but for the first time in the last thirty minutes of the storm, it felt eerily calm. He glanced out of the window. They still hadn’t made it past the cliffs, but it wouldn’t be too much farther now. If the boat got stuck here, it would be just his shitty luck.

The sound of metal creaking filled Chuck’s ears, and the boat lurched sideways. Outside he could hear people screaming and yelling, and when he glanced upward, the roof was bending inward. He darted outside, trying to see what had happened, but it was too dark. The boat lurched once more, and Chuck was plunged into the freezing water.

He felt himself sinking, being turned over like some pebble in the ocean. He kicked out his legs, trying to orient himself upward, but the sea and sky seemed to blend together, and he couldn’t figure what was up and what was down. Filled with frustration and trying not to panic, Chuck kicked his legs out once more, hands trying to claw at anything. He was near the cliffs, that much was certain, and at least if he tried to grip onto a rock, it might spare him from getting caught in a current and getting his head bashed in.

His foot collided with a rock, and Chuck grabbed at it, kicking against it to propel himself upward. As soon as he got to the surface, Chuck inhaled a deep breath and tightly gripped the protruding rock. It was slippery, but he dug his fingers into the tiny crevices. Certain portions of the rock glowed blue, and Chuck used that light to see. Treading water, he squinted in the rain to see if anyone else from the boat was nearby. He saw someone bobbing a few paces away, but as he started calling out to them, the rock he was gripping moved.

“Huh?” Chuck let go and dropped back into the water. The rock turned, and as it did, Chuck noticed it had face. “Fucking shit,” Chuck breathed.

The creature let out a screech, and Chuck tried swimming away. He closed his eyes from oncoming waves created by the monster, but when he opened his eyes again, he spotted something else slinking in the water. Something pressed against his back, and Chuck jerked forward, momentarily sinking before gaining his nerve and swimming away. However, as he did, the current pulled him, and the waves pushed him down, and all Chuck could do was go with it. He gulped a breath of air, taking in some sea water as well.

As the water surrounded him, he felt himself slipping from consciousness. Freezing, disoriented, and lacking oxygen, he waited and hoped the current would eventually let up and let him swim back to the surface. Chuck grimaced. His dad would be pissed if Chuck died like this. He swam upward, trying not to go against the current, but it was no use. Eventually—hopefully—he would make it to the surface again. Steady hands gripped his arms, and Chuck jerked away, but the hands gripped him tightly and pulled him upward.

When Chuck reached the surface, he ended up puking, hacking up sea water and bile before sucking in a lungful of air. His savior didn’t seem to mind. Chuck swiped his hair off of his forehead, nearly laughing when he saw Raleigh was the one keeping him in place.

 Raleigh frowned at him. “You think you can stay in one place for a little longer?”

Chuck furrowed his brow. “What?”

Before Raleigh could clarify, the monster snarled and sent waves crashing. Raleigh hugged Chuck tight to him while they braced themselves, his fingers digging into Chuck’s shoulders. “Shit,” Raleigh breathed, like he was somehow more in disbelief by the endless waves than by the monster. Raleigh swam backward, just missing a swipe from the creature’s hand. “Jin, behind you!”

Chuck wasn’t sure where to put his hands. Raleigh didn’t have a shirt on, but he didn’t seem embarrassed in the least by his lack of clothing.

“Hey.” Raleigh jostled Chuck. “Swim to the beach with the others. I’ve got to help Mako.” He gave Chuck a hard shove in the direction Chuck guessed was land.

“Wait!” Chuck turned to see what the fuck Raleigh thought he was doing, but Raleigh had already dove under the water. Near the monster Chuck could see four other people…or two people and three seals. He wasn’t sure. The people kept bobbing back under the water. Maybe five people and five seals but they kept fucking moving.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.” He watched as Raleigh reappeared, holding a spear and throwing it to Mako. Raleigh dove into a wave, and Chuck saw he had a tail. “Seriously?” He shook his head and looked up at the sky. “Motherfucking selkies.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had planned four chapters when I was plotting this fic, but after I started writing it all out, I realized I needed to space stuff out, so six chapters now! 
> 
> Also, thank you [TheSaurus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaurus/profile) for being my swear word consultant. I like to think I am well versed in vulgarity, but sometimes I need help finding that perfect swear word. The more the merrier.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I’m not trying to be cute by constantly adding another chapter to the ‘total chapters.’ Originally I thought I could shove everything into four chapters, but as I wrote it all out, I realized I had been overly optimistic.

Chuck snuggled deeper into his blankets, refusing to open his eyes despite his throbbing headache. He heard his dad making noise in the kitchen, but everything could just disappear for all he cared.

His whole body was sore, and his dreams had been so fucked up. Dreaming about Raleigh and Mako, having tails and killing some monster with spears and swords. Yeah, he clearly needed to lay off the alcohol.

“Hey,” a finger prodded Chuck’s forehead, “are you awake?”

“What?” Chuck swatted the offending hand away, and when he blinked his eyes open, three identical sets of eyes were staring back at him. “I think I’m hallucinating,” Chuck said blandly.

One of the three put their hands up. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Chuck furrowed his brow. “Four,” he said slowly. “But there are three of you.”

The three hallucinations laughed and shook their heads. “There are three of us.”

Chuck smacked the nearest one. “Then get out of my bed.” As he sat up, he realized he actually wasn’t in his own room. He wasn’t even wearing clothes, for that matter. He pulled the blankets tighter around, noticing the way his stomach was tightly bandaged. His muscles ached when he sat up straight, and Chuck leaned back a little. He glanced around the bedroom. It was dark outside, but that didn’t tell him how long he’d been unconscious.

“Leatherback almost killed you.”

“Who?”

“The kaiju.”

Chuck squinted his eyes. “You mean that kraken?”

The nearest hallucination smiled. “No, the _kaiju_.”

“Raleigh! Mako! He’s awake,” the middle hallucination yelled.

As Raleigh and Mako entered the room, Chuck laid back and pressed his hands against his eyes. The whole lot of them were wearing fur capes, and while Mako had found a way to neatly arrange the pelt so it kept her body hidden, the others were less careful. Chuck had never seen so many dicks in one room in his entire life.

He glanced at the three people covered in fur sitting on the bed. “So either last night I found out you’re all selkies, or there was an orgy that involved a lot of fur.”

One of the hallucinations grinned. “Do you want there to be an orgy?”

The other two groaned, and Raleigh glared at him. “We’re not having an orgy, Hu.”

Hu stared back at him, raising his eyebrows. “But we could.”

Chuck raised a hand. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

Mako stepped forward, holding a bowl filled with a nasty smelling concoction. “Leatherback attacked your boat. Jin, Hu, and Cheung helped Raleigh and me take him down.” She made a shooing motion with her hand, and Chuck scooted over a little bit. “But Leatherback sideswiped you. And because your clothes were wet and cold and getting in the way of bandaging you, we took them off of you.”

Chuck had never heard Mako say so much to him before, and he took a moment to process it all. “Thanks.”

The corners of her mouth ticked upward. “You’re welcome.”

Raleigh took a step forward. “And right now we need to change your bandages.”

When Mako and Raleigh unwrapped Chuck’s bandages, Chuck had to look away. It looked messy and infected. “I’m not going to die, am I?” Mako and Raleigh stared at the wound, tilting their heads as Mako started cleaning it. The lack of response made Chuck widen his eyes. “I’m not going to die, _right_!?”

Raleigh pursed his lips. “Mako knows what she’s doing. You’ll be fine.” However, Mako and Raleigh kept making the same expressions as Mako cleaned the wound, eyebrows ticking every now and then. It wasn’t the most comforting sight. “And you’d only been unconscious for a _few_ hours,” Raleigh continued. “That right there shows you’re probably going to live.”

Chuck sucked in a breath, watching how all the other selkies nodded their head in agreement. When Mako finished applying the salve to Chuck’s stomach and arm, Jin laid down next to him. Mako moved around the bed, and Chuck noticed Jin also had a nasty gash on his stomach, and a few scratches on his arms.

“Jin was the one who saw you go under the second time,” Raleigh said. “He ended up taking you back to the shore.”

Chuck nodded in appreciation toward Jin, but when he looked at Raleigh, he snorted. “Glad someone was around to notice.”

Raleigh narrowed his eyes at him. “I _told_ you to swim to the shore.”

Chuck opened his mouth to respond, but then his gaze accidentally dropped too low. He looked away from Raleigh’s lap, and shook his head. “You know,” Chuck groaned, “I hear clothes are this great new invention.”

\---

Chuck blinked his eyes open, not sure when he had fallen asleep. He frowned, not sure if he should trust the selkies’ medical expertise anymore. Human logic usually dictated people with concussions shouldn’t fall asleep immediately afterward. When he voiced this into the darkness, a warm hand pressed against his shoulder.

“You weren’t throwing up, you weren’t dizzy, you weren’t having blurry vision, your speech was fine, and your memory was clearly working,” Raleigh said from somewhere on the other side of the bed. “You can go to sleep,” he murmured.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you a doctor?”

“No,” Raleigh replied. “Are you?”

“No, but I just think—”

“Mako won’t let you die.” Raleigh smoothed his hand over Chuck’s shoulder in a placating manner. Raleigh probably expected it to calm Chuck down, but if anything it woke him up. “She’s right here, and she’s good at this sort of stuff. She’ll wake up if she senses anything’s wrong.”

Chuck blinked a few times as he tried to accustom his eyesight to the darkness. There laying on the bed next to him were Raleigh and Mako, Raleigh facing him while Mako’s head was tucked underneath Raleigh’s jaw. Her back was toward Chuck, but it was definitely her.

“You guys are naked, aren’t you,” Chuck groaned.

Raleigh let out a soft chuckle. “We’ve got our pelts on.”

“Which are basically just extensions of yourself. So yeah, naked.”

Raleigh smiled and drew his hand away from Chuck, wrapping it around Mako when she made a disapproving noise. Raleigh smoothed the back of her fur pelt down.

Chuck blinked a few times. “Is she your girlfriend? Wife?” He watched where Raleigh’s hand stayed resting on Mako’s back. “Or what’s the word—your mate?”

Raleigh shook his head. He plopped his head back on the pillows, probably realizing Chuck wasn’t going to fall back asleep anytime soon. Raleigh shrugged his shoulders. “She’s going to control the ocean one day,” he said as if that wasn’t completely ridiculous. “Her dad is the king.”

Chuck frowned. “That doesn’t quite explain why you’re literally curled around each other.”

“Oh.” Raleigh stayed quiet for awhile, but then he let out a sigh. “Killing kaiju saps a lot of energy.”

“So what is this, bonding time? Puppy piles?”

“Yep,” Raleigh yawned. “The triplets are in Yancy’s room, probably all cuddled together.”

Chuck nodded, though still a little weirded out by the tactile behavior. He wiggled his toes underneath the blankets. Raleigh had been kind enough to let Chuck borrow some sleep pants, but the whole near nakedness was still too intimate. Touching each other’s pelts seemed like the equivalent of skin on skin contact. Chuck’s eyes widened, and he felt his throat close up a little. “So that pelt in Yancy’s room? Was that yours?”

Raleigh nodded. “Are you going to tell?”

Chuck’s mouth pursed, not quite frowning, but close to it. He had been fighting back a blush, but Raleigh wasn’t even on the same wavelength. “I wasn’t planning on it and I’m not going to.” He glared at Raleigh. “If I said ‘yeah,’ were you just going to throw me over the cliffs?”

“Mako’s still considering it. That’s part of why she’s here.” Raleigh curled his arm tighter around her as he leaned toward Chuck. “People who break into homes probably can’t be trusted.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone you’re a selkie,” Chuck hissed. He pulled the blankets tighter around him, ignoring the way Raleigh smirked. “I was just concerned. Alaska has the highest percentage of missing people who are never found. And you’re a hermit who fishes alone and lives alone. It’s not that difficult of a jump to think you could be up to no good. _Sorry_.” He closed his eyes, ignoring the way his stomach twisted for reasons that had nothing to do with a possible concussion. “I’m going to sleep now.”

Mako let out a tiny sigh. Chuck had closed his eyes, but he heard her lightly smack Raleigh’s body. “I was sleeping,” she murmured. Chuck felt the mattress dip, and when he opened his eyes again, Mako was starting to crawl off of the bed. “Wait,” she directed at Chuck. She turned on a lamp and grabbed the bowl of medicine. “One more time.”

Chuck grumbled, but he pushed down the blankets to his lap. “Are you going to wake up Jin to do this to him too?”

“No,” Mako replied. “You’re human.”

\---

After Mako redressed his wounds, she carefully adjusted her pelt around her shoulders, and Raleigh walked her out. She had said something about a Hannibal and Newt and wanting to make sure the kaiju was cleared up, but she didn’t go into too much detail this time.

When Raleigh walked back into the bedroom, Chuck half expected him to kick him out of his bed, but Raleigh simply burrowed underneath the blankets and furs once more. Before Raleigh could turn off the lamp, Chuck raised his voice. “Does my dad even know I’m alive?”

Raleigh’s eyes widened. “I forgot to tell Herc.” He walked out to the front of the house, but then he marched back in. “Mako’ll tell him…I think.”

Chuck raised an eyebrow. “You think?”

“She probably didn’t forget.” Raleigh shrugged. “She’s better at that sort of stuff than me.”

Chuck closed his eyes and let out a laugh. “Shit.” He bit his lip. “So she’s willing to push me off a cliff, but not enough to keep my dad from finding out I didn’t die when Striker got wrecked?”

“I don’t know,” Raleigh replied, but it was tentative at best.

“Well she can’t go waltzing into town in nothing but a fur coat,” Chuck pointed out. “So I’m going to assume either she forgot too, or she’s still considering making my death look like an accident.”

“She has more honor than that. And I don’t think she hates you.” Raleigh paused, and Chuck waited to hear all the details explaining why Mako didn’t hate him. Instead Raleigh said, “I was pretty sure you were going to steal my pelt.”

Chuck squawked, but Raleigh continued on.

“It happens. You know, people trying to be Good Samaritans but in reality endangering lives.” Raleigh shrugged his shoulders. “Mako was here to observe—make sure I’m okay here or if I was going to be a liability.”

“A liability?”

Raleigh raised an eyebrow. “Just because selkies exist doesn’t mean they necessarily want fame for their good work.” Raleigh looked away, pursing his mouth before he kept talking. “It’s easy to let it go to one’s head, and want some recognition…but yeah, if you were going to rat me out, I would’ve just abandoned everything and gone back permanently per Mako’s dad’s orders.”

Chuck nodded. He supposed it was reasonable—abandoning your life in order to protect yourself and the people you care about—but it still sounded awful as fuck. “You said that was only part of the reason she’s here. What’s the other reason?”

“Uh,” Raleigh laughed, “her dad figured I would be okay to trust with his daughter as her…trainer? Someone to help her with actual hands on experience.” Raleigh shook his head. “I took down a kaiju by myself once, and since there’s never that many kaiju over here to begin with, he figured Mako wouldn’t get into too much trouble.”

“Yeah, and that’s why she was taking down a kaiju tonight,” Chuck smirked.

“Yeah,” Raleigh sighed, but the way he smiled made it seem like he was more than a little proud of her.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you couldn’t tell, I really ship the Wei Triplets and Raleigh. All three of them with Raleigh. So far I’m like 3/3 of Pacific Rim fics I've written that have small mentions of this ship. I really just want to see more of Raleigh being paired with the triplets.
> 
> Also, I recently found out that the whole “don’t sleep after a concussion” is pretty much a myth and that sleeping is fine as long as there person doesn’t have some of the severe symptoms? But waking them up and checking on them every so hours to make sure no severe symptoms have developed. But I’m so paranoid that I’ll probably still keep accepting it as true, just like how I listen when my mom tells me drinking 7UP and rubbing Vicks Vaporub all over my body are supposed to be perfect solutions for any flu/fever/cold/disease.


	5. Chapter 5

Chuck stayed up that night, asking Raleigh question after question, trying not to bug him too much but also not really giving a shit because it wasn’t like one was suddenly immersed in a secret selkie world every day.

“Is that how you know how to fish?” Chuck asked. “Do you fish with nets or as a selkie?”

“Yeah.” Raleigh flopped his head on his pillow. “And either way. It depends how I’m feeling that day.”

“Are you cold most days? Doesn’t it bug you not wearing your furs at least?”

Raleigh yawned. “I wear sweaters. They help a little.”

“What really happened to Yancy?”

“Kaiju,” Raleigh sighed. “Remember I told you I took one down by myself? My brother and I were alone fighting it.”

Chuck didn’t press the last question, instead continuing to other topics. Raleigh went along for the most part, yawning and burrowing his face into the pillow amidst Chuck’s incessant questions. But if Mako was going to kill him off, Chuck at least wanted to have some questions answered before his untimely death.

Raleigh stood up, not saying anything as he left the bedroom. He was gone for awhile, but when he came back in, he handed Chuck a bowl of soup and told him to stay put. It still was dark outside, but Chuck didn’t want to sleep. “I’m going to go tell Herc you’re alive,” Raleigh said.

Chuck stared into the depths of his soup while Raleigh took off the pelt and put on normal clothes. When Raleigh cracked his back, Chuck looked up. His posture was still the same, but dressed in pants and a sweater, suddenly now it made more sense why Raleigh never looked entirely comfortable around town. The clothes just didn’t fit him quite as well as the pelt. Raleigh picked up his pelt, presumably to put it away in Yancy’s room.

Chuck nodded and ate the food he was given. Without Raleigh to bug, Chuck fell asleep, but it felt like mere minutes later when he woke up to his dad crying and thanking Raleigh.

\---

Chuck wasn’t sure what Raleigh told his dad about the boat wreckage, but Herc seemed to know more than he let on. There might not have been pelts scattered throughout the house, but Chuck knew his dad, and his dad wasn’t _this_ gullible.

But Herc nodded throughout Raleigh’s edited story of what happened. The rest of the crew hadn’t gotten a full glimpse of the kaiju, only abandoned ship when it started caving in.

Herc let Chuck stay there since Raleigh and Mako were pretty good at taking care of everything. For a moment, Chuck’s eye twitched. While he could appreciate his saviors’ work, they also had mentioned quite often to him just how much his life was in their hands. If there were ever a time for his dad to be bossy and stubborn, now would be it. But Herc just sniffed at the medicine and agreed Chuck should stay there.

\---

Apparently modesty wasn’t a prized character trait in selkie culture—then again, Chuck had never considered what would be key concepts in selkie culture. He had never thought about it before. He hadn’t even thought men could actually be selkies. On the topic of male selkies, the only myths he had heard had always just seemed like weird erotica: Cry into the ocean and a handsome selkie man will appear and he’ll make an excellent lover.

Chuck wondered if that myth was actually true, but it wasn’t something he felt like asking. And as much as he might’ve considered what Raleigh’s cock looked like, he hadn’t imagined there being four other people who would also be in the same room—and mostly naked as well—the first time he saw it. Or the next several times either.

While Chuck needed the gross medicine, Jin needed rest, and Cheung and Hu weren’t going to leave him, and so Raleigh agreed they should all just stay with him.

When the triplets did act up in the beginning, tired of being confined to the house, teasing and riling up the other two triplets and the rest of the occupants, Raleigh stepped up to stop it. Mako could silence them if they bugged her enough, but she let Raleigh be in charge of what went on in his house. In the beginning, Raleigh didn’t know which triplet was which. Chuck and Mako had already noticed all the little discrepancies, but Raleigh seemed to lag. Instead he grabbed the troublemaker, holding them steady by their jaw and looking into their eyes before telling them by name to settle down. It had been weird at first, until Chuck found out that apparently one of the way selkies identified others was by their eyes when they were seals, and those stayed the same in both seal and human form. If Cheung or Jin were the ones at fault, they tended to grin and apologize sincerely enough. But when it was Hu, he grinned and apologized, but he also pressed a kiss on Raleigh’s nose.

The triplets constantly joked around, constantly looking like they were on the verge of breaking something, but they never did. They wrestled and played games and were loud, but they kept Raleigh’s house in one piece. In fact, they walked around and inspected Raleigh’s house even more reverently than Chuck did the first time he was in here.

While Chuck laid down on the couch, the triplets peered at the shelves of shells and gems. For the first two days, they wore their furs everywhere, and it was starting to grate on Chuck’s nerves. “What’s up with everyone’s lack of modesty?” Chuck asked. “Sure, you’ve all got great bodies, but please put some clothes on.”

The triplets snickered, but only Cheung responded to him, shrugging a shoulder. “We’re good like this.”

“Oh,” Raleigh started, raising his head up from his book. He was sitting on the couch while Mako tried piecing together a puzzle on the coffee table. She had been working at it for hours, and while she didn’t mind help, she was doing fine on her own. “I have clothes you can borrow,” he offered. Raleigh smiled timidly, and Chuck had the feeling Raleigh had forgotten to ever bother offering his clothes to the triplets in the first place. Mako had already been wearing Raleigh’s clothes, and Chuck’s dad had given Raleigh some clothes and other things when Raleigh went back down to the town a second time.

Mako’s mouth slowly curved into a smile, her gaze darting toward Raleigh before focusing back on her puzzle. Hu jumped up first, quickly followed by the other two, and they followed Raleigh into his bedroom. When they came back out, dressed in Raleigh’s clothes, Chuck felt a small ache, but he ignored it. Instead he called them over to the couch to show them how to play a card game. ~~~~

When Chuck dealt out the second hand, Cheung leaned toward him. Just as Chuck was considering pushing him away, Cheung reached out his hand and lightly held the pearl attached to Chuck’s necklace. “Did Raleigh make this for you?”

Hu and Jin leaned over too, messing up the cards and annoying Chuck. “Raleigh,” Jin called, “why does Chuck get a necklace?”

Raleigh glanced over from his discussion with Mako. “I gave it to him years ago.”

Hu huffed. “Well we want necklaces too. Or a bracelet.”

Jin and Cheung agreed, speaking up over each other about why they so clearly deserved one. Raleigh and Mako exchanged a grin before Raleigh responded. “Fine. What kind?”

\---

With Raleigh’s clothes, the Wei triplets placed their pelts in Yancy’s trunk and were able to explore the town more. By the fifth day, Chuck had accepted Jin might be his only company for hours at a time while Raleigh and Mako took Hu and Cheung with them fishing.

Most days Jin was perfectly fine being quiet and reading, but sometimes he flopped onto the floor and sighed. Raleigh’s house was only entertaining for so long.

Chuck scrubbed a hand over his face. “So you guys kill kaiju, right?”

Jin glanced over at him. “Yeah.” He twined his fingers through his necklace. The triplets had chosen dark red sea glass to go on their necklaces, and the color popped against Jin’s cream colored sweater.

“And that’s all you do, like 24/7. Just kill kaiju?”

Jin shook his head. “Nope. Sometimes we play games. Or explore. Whatever we feel like really. We have a nice little place in Hong Kong where just my brothers and I live.” Jin grinned. “Sometimes Mako visits us. But only on the strictest orders that we won’t let her tag along if there’s kaiju.”

Chuck let out a huff, not exactly pleased with that sort of answer, but the door opened and the rest of the triplets plus Mako and Raleigh piled in. The large group of people meant lots of mouths to feed, and Raleigh and Hu each carried two bags probably filled with fish, shellfish, and vegetables that would be put into their dinner for that night. As Raleigh went to close the door, he set one bag on the floor before following Hu to the kitchen while the rest sat down on the couch and living room floor.

“So you guys are soldiers?” Chuck asked.

Mako tilted her head. “Sort of.”

“Well everyone in this house besides me has been trained to go out and kill kaiju,” Chuck remarked. “I don’t know what else you would call yourself.”

The triplets frowned and glanced at each other, and even Mako looked thoughtful. “We know what to look for,” Mako said. “But it’s not like we’re always needed. Just when we’re called.”

“Well how do you know when there’s a kaiju?”

Mako, Cheung, and Jin froze. Chuck waited for them to answer, but they all looked away. Chuck caught Raleigh coming back out of the kitchen, and as Raleigh bent over to pick up the forgotten bag, Chuck repeated his question to him.

Raleigh’s grip on the bag slackened, but he readjusted it, shuffling his feet as he did so. He glanced upward before making eye contact with Chuck. “You know how people sometimes say they can tell it’s going to rain? Because they can feel it in their bones?”

Chuck shrugged. He’d heard it enough times, and some people tended to be correct in their predictions. “Yeah.”

“Well” Raleigh coughed, “we all have scars from kaiju.” Raleigh scuffed his feet against the floor, slowly walking backward into the kitchen before Chuck could ask him another question.

Chuck’s eyes widened. He had seen the scars on Raleigh’s shoulder and chest, had seen the ones that spread over the triplets’ bodies, had even seen hints of some on Mako’s collar bone and wrists.

As he thought over it—not immediately ridiculing the fact that the presence of scars was a poor source of telecommunication considering the last week—Chuck’s mouth pursed into a tight line. He’d found out a lot about Raleigh over the last few days. He found out a lot about Yancy too. The second day Chuck and Jin had been cooped up in the house by themselves, Jin had explained what happened in great detail.

Raleigh’s parents had gotten killed during a kaiju attack, and while Jazmine escaped unscathed, Raleigh and Yancy had been less lucky. But after getting thrashed around by the kaiju that first time, Yancy and Raleigh trained. They fought kaiju together for years, until of course Knifehead came around.

Jin explained how the Gage twins had gotten to Knifehead first, but somehow the kaiju outmaneuvered them. How by the time the Beckets reached the kaiju, Yancy and Raleigh were pretty much on their own. Knifehead was fast, and Yancy and Raleigh did their best to track it through the Pacific Ocean, but the kaiju was smart and knew how to go farther into the depths of the ocean, how to hide in the crevices, how to play dead, and it ended up killing Yancy. It hurt Raleigh too, pierced his heart and sliced him up. But Raleigh killed it—must’ve lunged straight for its heart. The other selkies tracked Raleigh for days, following the blood and the sharks. And when they finally did find Raleigh floating in the water, Stacker took him to dry land, got him some clothes, took him to the Beckets’ old boat, and sent him home.

Chuck turned his gaze back toward Cheung, Jin, and Mako. “Are you shitting me?”

The triplets shook their heads. “You’ll probably be able to tell too,” Jin contemplated, pointedly nodding his head at Chuck’s torso.

“Usually the kaiju appear after summer and going into winter, it’s the right temperature and conditions for them. And after that, well, we just feel it from our scars. Like we’re being summoned,” Cheung added. “And generally selkies with the scars answer that call and use it against the kaiju.” As Hu and Raleigh walked back into the living room, Cheung looked over at Raleigh. “But Raleigh here had been ignoring it.”

Hu frowned at Cheung. “He hasn’t been ignoring it. Just hasn’t answered.”

Chuck rolled his eyes. “What’s the difference?”

“Ignoring implies you disregard it intentionally. Like you refuse to acknowledge it.” Hu glanced at Raleigh. “Stacker doesn’t think you do that. You couldn’t ignore it if you tried. You just weren’t not in the right mindset to respond appropriately, so you didn’t answer the call.”

Raleigh sighed but he didn’t say anything in response. Instead he went to Yancy’s room to grab something to knit. When Raleigh went to sit on the floor, Hu sat down next to him. Hu stared at the half-made scarf before pointing at it. “I want one.”

Mako let out a giggle, breaking the tension in the room. “What? It’ll get all wet and ruined if you take it with you.”

“Well I want one,” Hu pouted. He reached over to Cheung and grabbed the already made scarf he was wearing. Cheung scrunched up his face at his brother, but Hu ignored it. “I realize I can’t take it with me. Doesn’t mean I can’t wear one while I’m here.”

Raleigh tilted his head. “I could always mail it.”

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I need to share [this picture.](http://sweetraleighbecket.tumblr.com/post/78088045740/kanyen-orth-anglepoiselamp-most-marine) I saw it and sort of thought it was exactly what bb!selkie!Raleigh would do, bugging Yancy nonstop despite Yancy always wanting to sleep.

When Chuck was finally deemed healthy enough to go home, Raleigh and Mako and the triplets escorted him down the mountain. They didn’t throw him over the cliffs, but the procession felt just as severe.

Chuck had always been able to pull off a relatively menacing face, but the selkies were able to keep their faces unreadable, and that in itself was more than a little worrisome. But when they did make it to the town, they parted halfway into the town, nodding at Chuck as he walked the rest of the way to his home.

While Chuck had been away, his dad had spent his time trying to salvage together the money for a new boat. They had money in their savings, but it was tricky. And until their new boat arrived, they would just have to see about working with other crews. Chuck went with his dad onto whichever boat was willing to take them, but when the triplets finally left, Chuck went to the market to visit Mako and Raleigh. If they were willing to let him live knowing their secret, then they probably wouldn’t mind if he worked with them on their boat.

Chuck had visited them sometimes when the triplets were still there, but Hu was always in Raleigh’s space, leaning on him, pressing up against him, kissing him. Chuck hadn’t known if Raleigh strictly liked women or what, but the way Raleigh smiled and kissed Hu back clued Chuck in. Chuck rolled his eyes through it, grumbling and joining in with the others’ teasing. He couldn’t hate Hu even if he tried, but he could make Raleigh and Hu blush for being a couple of idiots who couldn’t keep their PDA to a minimum.

When Chuck asked Mako and Raleigh about working with them, they shrugged once, having one of their weird nonverbal discussions for a minute with their eyes, their eyebrows rising and dipping, and agreed it would be fine.

Chuck wanted to see all the things the selkies talked about, and not while on the brink of a concussion. So the three of them became friends. _Antagonistic friends_ sometimes, but friends nevertheless. Chuck spent his days working with the two of them, unless Mako and Raleigh decided to go deep sea diving, and then he would only hang out with the two of them at the market.

Sometimes while they were fishing, Chuck would make fun of the fact that Mako and Raleigh were seals. They were all grace and energy in the water, but as soon as they flopped onto the boat in their seal form, Mako and Raleigh were too adorable to take seriously. After the two of them transformed back, Raleigh would remind Chuck that _he_ was the one watching and cooing at a bunch of ‘adorable seals.’

After a month or so, they started living out of each other’s pockets. Especially when Mako met Chuck’s dog. Max immediately liked Mako, and Chuck brought his dog to Raleigh’s house sometimes. By the time his dad’s new boat arrived, months had passed by, and Chuck had practically moved in to Raleigh’s house, with Mako sleeping in Yancy’s bed and Chuck on the couch. It didn’t feel too crowded, even when Jazmine randomly appeared.

But when his dad’s new boat did get there, Chuck went back to work with his dad. Chuck visited Raleigh and Mako still, spending the night and having to make the trek back down in the morning to get on a boat with his dad, but he didn’t go out to sea with them anymore.

After several months, Mako pulled Chuck aside and told him she was going back home. Raleigh had helped train her in every fighting maneuver he knew, and they had taken down a few more kaiju together, but she wanted to prove herself out at sea, wanted to travel more, study the different types of kaiju that emerged all over the world, train with more selkies. While Chuck had gotten attached to her, he wasn’t entirely sure what the problem was. People moved. It happened. But Mako just sighed and told him Raleigh would be alone again.

With just Raleigh working by himself again, Chuck presented the problem to his dad, and his dad—being his dad—laughed and told Chuck he could go work on whatever boat he felt like. It made Chuck feel childish and a little underappreciated, but the mirth in his dad’s eyes spoke otherwise.

It was different without having Mako around. A little quieter, a little more somber. It wasn’t like she died, but it wasn’t the same dynamic. Raleigh wasn’t exactly depressed, but he did seem a little forlorn. Raleigh had taught her everything he knew, and while he was pleased with all of her accomplishments, he certainly missed her. After a couple of week, it got better. Chuck and Raleigh slipped back into old habits, and their jokes and conversations started carrying the same cadence as before.

Chuck slowly moved back into Raleigh’s home, since it only made sense.

Sometimes they played cards or read books—aloud or quietly to themselves—and other times they would sit on the couch and listen to the radio or watch Raleigh’s shitty excuse for a TV. The whole situation was boring and comfortable and Chuck really liked it. Staying up too late watching shitty television, falling asleep tangled up on the couch, deciding to sleep in because the couch certainly wasn’t big enough for two people and it made their muscles and joints hurt way too much.

It was during one of those mornings that Chuck leaned up and kissed Raleigh. It wasn’t even anything intense, just a brush of lips against Raleigh’s mouth. When Chuck dropped his head back down on the couch, he watched and waited for Raleigh’s reaction, frowning slightly throughout it. Raleigh stayed frozen in place for only a moment before grinning and ducking down to give Chuck a proper kiss. They never actually got around to going outside that day, instead staying in bed all day, warm and safe from the harsh weather outside.

Apparently Chuck kissing Raleigh was all he had to do to open the floodgates. If Chuck wasn’t sure where they stood before, he knew by the end of that day. He still referred to the house as Raleigh’s house, but it was pretty much _theirs_. After that day, Chuck stopped sleeping on the couch and moved all of his belongings into Raleigh’s bedroom.

Over the next few months, they didn’t exactly have sex in every room in the house—both agreeing Yancy’s old room seemed sort of off limits—but they did their best. The couch, Raleigh’s bedroom, the shower, the kitchen table, up against the wall. A few times on the boat. A couple of times overlooking the ocean, though all of those times were probably bad ideas because of the cold. But Raleigh liked traveling up the other side of the mountain, on the opposite side from the town, in nothing but his pelt. And Chuck hadn’t ever been a fan of patience.

But Raleigh didn’t mind the cold so much. He didn’t need a lot of layers to exist outside. He could forego sweaters and whatnot while working, chopping lumber or cleaning fish or tending to his flowers. And Chuck was always ready to push Raleigh up against whatever surface there might be and suck his cock. Raleigh: the prettiest lumberjack. Because despite all the sweaters and plaid and physique and the persona he had built by living on the top of a mountain like a hermit, he sometimes grew out his hair and braided it or put it in a bun. Chuck liked him clean shaven, and Raleigh didn’t mind either way. If Chuck was feeling particularly spiteful, he would pluck flowers from the yard and stick them in Raleigh’s hair, but Raleigh didn’t mind. He happily went through the rest of the day with flowers braided in his hair.

When Mako and Jazmine visited, they weren’t even a little surprised by the new relationship. Jazmine visited first, and she teased Chuck about it every chance she got, but she didn’t mean any harm. Mako, on the other hand, surprised him. She had been pleased by the new relationship, but by the end of the second day of her visit, right before she dove off the cliffs to follow Raleigh, she turned toward Chuck. She smiled serenely, and Chuck smiled back.

“If you hurt him, I will have no problem making your death look like an accident,” she said, before patting Chuck on the shoulder and diving into the water.

\---

Chuck walked up the mountain path feeling shitty and tired. Raleigh had left days ago with Jazmine for whatever selkie celebration they had, and rather than waste away for a week, Chuck had went to go work with his dad.

It wasn’t horrible working with his dad, but it was labor intensive and then he had to climb up the mountain to an empty house. Raleigh had given him a rough estimate of how long he would be gone, but it was still maddening. Chuck was happy for Raleigh, and even he could admit he liked seeing Jazmine smile, but it was lonely living at the top of the mountain. Chuck wasn’t sure how Raleigh did it for all those years, and he was grateful he at least had Max to keep him company.

As soon as Chuck opened the door, Max came waddling toward him. He wagged his tail, and Chuck couldn’t help but sit down and pull his dog into a hug.

“How was your day, huh, Max?”

Max barked, and Chuck nodded. “Probably boring. We do need to find you a friend.”

Max drooled over Chuck’s hand, but Chuck simply sighed and went to the kitchen to heat up some cuts of meat for his dog. After Chuck heated up soup on the stove and ladled into a bowl for himself, he started shucking off his layers of clothes. The house was heated throughout most of the day in deference to Max, and Chuck was starting to feel the warmth.

Soggy jackets and sweaters and shoes were discarded and left wherever they fell. When he was down to his underwear and shirt, he plopped down on the couch and slurped up his soup. Max curled up on his dog bed in the middle of the living room. Max only turned around a few times on the dog bed before getting comfortable, but no matter how Chuck squirmed around on the couch, nothing felt good. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the TV before laying down, and Chuck decided it would be pointless to get back up. Everything sort of sucked when Raleigh wasn’t there.

Chuck was on his way to falling asleep when he heard the front door lock click open. He quickly sat up, only to scowl when Raleigh walked in and started laughing at him. “You’re both making the same expressions,” Raleigh pointed out.

Chuck turned his head toward Max, who was in fact sitting up as well. “Go back to sleep,” Chuck ordered. Max let out a huff, but he plopped back down on the dog bed.

When Raleigh shut the door and walked toward him, only his pelt draped around him, Chuck couldn’t help but pull Raleigh into a kiss, dragging his hands through the fur.

“Did you have fun?” Chuck asked.

“Yeah,” Raleigh breathed, “missed you though.”

“Good,” Chuck growled.

Chuck pulled him toward the bedroom, picking him up when Raleigh tried to laugh and tease away, and pushed him down onto the middle of the bed. Raleigh looked at him wryly, but he was grinning. “I’m going to have to go back swimming to get the stains out of my fur.”

Chuck rolled his eyes. “Oh, what a hardship. Like you weren’t going to go swimming later tonight. It’s a full moon and you love that shit.”

Raleigh raised an eyebrow and nodded in agreement. “True.”

Chuck stripped off the last remainders of his clothes quickly and climbed onto the bed. He grabbed at a container filled with oil, dipping his fingers in it to work open Raleigh.

When Chuck pressed a finger in, Raleigh groaned and spread his legs a little wider. Chuck tilted his head. Raleigh was so pretty, and Chuck loved his mouth, and so he crawled up the bed a little and kissed him. He tasted like salt—tasted like the ocean, Chuck corrected.

When Chuck finally got around to adding a second and then third finger, he pressed his face into the furs draping over Raleigh’s shoulder. It smelled like the sea and it smelled like Raleigh and like home. Chuck kissed Raleigh’s neck a little, pulling his fingers out slowly as he did. Chuck sat up and rearranged himself in between Raleigh’s legs, slicking up his cock, and lined himself up. When he pushed in, Raleigh groaned and arched up. Sometimes Chuck wondered if he should be annoyed Chuck how enthusiastic Raleigh always was for his cock, but it only made him feel happy and wanted.

When Raleigh wrapped a leg around Chuck’s torso, Chuck grabbed some of the fur and wrapped it around Raleigh’s dick. Raleigh grinned, laughing at the feel of it, but after awhile he started squirming. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Raleigh gasped, sort of hiccupping about it, and so Chuck didn’t mind too much that he was balancing on one hand to keep himself from falling over. But then Raleigh tossed a smirk at Chuck. “Should I be concerned you’re into this?”

Chuck bit his lip and thrust in hard for that, which only made Raleigh laugh and moan at the same time. “You’re the one who’s getting turned on by this.”

Raleigh hummed in agreement, too close to his release to argue about it, and wrapped his hand around Chuck’s to help him keep pace. When Raleigh came, he let go of Chuck’s hand so Chuck could get a better angle, but he went back to working his cock, dragging out his orgasm for as long as possible.

With two hands to help him with leverage, Chuck started to fuck Raleigh hard. And with all the little breathy moans Raleigh was making, Chuck would think it wouldn’t be so hard to come, but his muscles were so sore today, and as soon as Raleigh moved his hand off of his stomach, Chuck laid down on top of him, held on, kissed him, could feel Raleigh moving his hands over his skin, could feel Raleigh’s fur being brushed against him. And when he did come, he stayed just like that. He didn’t move, just laid his cheek on Raleigh’s shoulder, and Raleigh let him stay like that. At one point, Chuck ran his fingers through Raleigh’s hair. Raleigh had cut it short before his trip, and Chuck massaged Raleigh’s scalp, until eventually Raleigh’s breathing started to even out.

When Chuck finally decided to move and let his dick slide out, Raleigh startled awake, laughing at the mess they made. He got up to grab a wet cloth, and Chuck burrowed into the pelt while he waited for Raleigh to come back from the bathroom.

“You know, usually you’re the one who does this,” Raleigh pointed out. “You’re getting lazy, Hansen.”

Chuck sighed and reached for Raleigh. “I missed you.”

That earned him a smile, and Raleigh scooted up next to him, wrapping the pelt around them and pulling the blankets over them. “Good.”

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super long chapter. Also, it’s sort of an epilogue.

Raleigh’s collection of books was a little unreal to Chuck. The books weren’t all Raleigh’s of course, but just the sheer volume was enough to make Chuck’s head spin.

The books were kept in shelves in both bedrooms, and they were almost like a glimpse into the life of each Becket family member. Raleigh’s father liked working with his hands, tinkering with human inventions to find a better way of things. His books were about science and math and innovations. Raleigh’s mother liked languages. She had linguistic books of multiple languages. Some taught how to speak the language, others were works of fiction, and even more were biographies and cultural histories. Yancy apparently liked stories about superheroes. Those ones were especially tattered, shared between the two brothers.

And then there were Jazmine’s. She had novels, history books, art books. Hers were a more mixed collection, and Raleigh seemed to spend the most time going through hers. Whenever she finished a book, she mailed it to them with the order to read it so they could at least have something to talk about instead of fish. Every now and then she would mail her brother arts and crafts books with whatever tools were required, and Raleigh would spend his evenings attempting them. If whatever she sent was in another language than English, Raleigh would take the time to translate it for Chuck.

But the point was Raleigh had traveled a lot of the world with his family when he was younger. The Beckets took family vacations to an extreme level. His family had visited just about every continent. Jazmine frequented their old haunts sometimes, and when she visited Alaska, Raleigh would go down memory lane recalling everything their family did. Raleigh offered to take Chuck wherever, whether by car or boat or plane, but Chuck much rather preferred staying right where he was.

Chuck didn’t care much about visiting other places, even if Alaska was cold and miserable sometimes. Alaska had some nice cities and nice places to visit. He didn’t mind traveling to those, but he didn’t have that itch to travel all over the world. Raleigh didn’t seem to have that itch either, and after three years of living with Raleigh, he was pretty sure he knew both himself and Raleigh quite well.

Chuck knew Raleigh would never leave him. He knew it, even if all the myths said selkies were faithless lovers and would eventually return to the sea. That sort of shit didn’t apply to them.

\---

Chuck rolled his eyes while Raleigh went about talking to Max. They’d never decided on finding Max a playmate—they considered it all the time, but they could just never agree on it—and Raleigh was going on about how Max must hate being left alone all day.

“He’s fine,” Chuck snapped.

Raleigh nodded his head. “I know. But he probably wouldn’t mind having another animal around.” He rubbed Max’s side. “Like a cat or another dog?”

“No.”

Raleigh hummed as he sat down on the kitchen floor. “I’d say fish, but that would be kind of weird,” Raleigh muttered.

Chuck ignored the rest of Raleigh’s rambling, focusing on getting their dinner finished and put onto the table. He’d complain about Raleigh not helping him, but Max seemed happy with all the attention, so Chuck let them be.

It wasn’t until everything was served that Chuck realized how quiet the house had gone. He turned toward Raleigh, who was now sitting on his haunches. He looked like he was staring into nothing. Maybe listening? Chuck frowned at him. “Raleigh?”

 Raleigh’s face didn’t change, but he promptly stood up and walked away.

Chuck stared down at Max. “What the fuck was that about?”

Max sneezed in response. The front door opened, and Chuck looked up in time to see Raleigh and his pelt. Chuck followed, expecting Raleigh to give some explanation like he usually did, but the next moment Raleigh dove into the ocean.

Chuck grabbed a jacket off the hook and shut the door behind him. It was still early fall, but it was cold and windy outside. He couldn’t quite make out Raleigh’s body, but he knew he was down there somewhere. He scanned the horizon, attempting to see if there was a kaiju or a wreck somewhere. The lighthouse cast some light on the ocean, but wherever Raleigh was going was probably farther than that.

Chuck waited and waited by the cliffs. It wasn’t until Max started barking from inside the house that Chuck headed inside. After Chuck fed Max dinner, he stared at his own dinner gone cold. He left the dishes and food sitting on the table, and went back outside, this time grabbing a lantern.

Chuck was more shocked than anything, and he went back to his spot at the edge of the cliffs and sat down and stared at the ocean. The triplets were right about their prediction of Chuck being able to tell by his scars if there were a kaiju, but his scars didn’t bother him at all at the moment. He slid a hand under his shirt, over where the biggest mess of scars were, but he felt nothing. Chuck scrubbed his other hand over his eyes. He swore he wasn’t crying, it was just the wind whipping into his face and everything hurt.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there. The sky overhead had gone dark, and endless stars shone overhead. When he heard a faraway noise coming from his left, he quickly sat up. It could be animals, but it was coming from the path Raleigh usually walked up when he was in nothing but his pelt.

As Chuck walked down the path, the noise became clearer, and he could make out the shapes of Raleigh carrying someone else. As he got closer, he realized it was Jazmine, but the light emitted from the lantern also highlighted bruises and cuts over her face. Hers looked older than the new ones forming on Raleigh.

Chuck set down the lantern. “Here.” He spread his arms and nodded at Jazmine, and Raleigh carefully maneuvered her into Chuck’s arms. When Raleigh moved away, Jazmine’s pelt slipped, exposing a very pregnant belly. Jazmine tugged her pelt back over herself, glaring at Chuck as if to dare him to say something. Chuck glared back, but he didn’t feel like having an argument with an injured person who he was going to have to carry up the cliffs. But there would be words once they got inside.

\---

Chuck laid Jazmine down on Yancy’s old bed. “What happened to her?”

“She ran into some orcas,” Raleigh replied as he grabbed stuff to stitch her up. He was still wearing his pelt, as was Jazmine wearing hers, but Raleigh pulled the furs aside so he could locate the damage. Despite years to get used to Raleigh’s lack of modesty, the selkies’ disregard for nudity always confused him. They were all just so comfortable being naked around each other, and it was a little unsettling to him. The last time a family member had seen him naked was when Chuck was five and still needed to be monitored while he took his nighttime baths.

Chuck rummaged through their first aid kit as well, setting things out that they were going to need. “How did you get away?”

“Sharks.”

Chuck looked up at Raleigh. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Raleigh spared Chuck a glance before starting the stitches. “If you’ve ever seen how orcas and sharks interact, this wouldn’t be a surprise.” Jazmine let out a cry, and Chuck grabbed a bottle of whiskey for her, but she only pushed it away. He’d put it in their first aid kit as a joke awhile ago, and sometimes it did come in handy. “Orcas and sharks don’t like each other,” Raleigh continued. “Whenever orcas spot sharks, orcas will hold them upside down and bite out their liver.”

Chuck stared at the two of them. “…Well that’s convenient for us.”

Raleigh nodded.

\---

When Jazmine was finally bandaged up to Raleigh’s standards, Raleigh finally let her go to sleep. As soon as Raleigh and Chuck were inside their own room, Chuck stopped Raleigh in his tracks.

“Are we going to ignore the fact that she’s bruised up and pregnant?”

Raleigh shook his head.

“So you’re going to ask her about it tomorrow then?”

“Yeah,” Raleigh shrugged.

Chuck glared at him. “Someone hurt your sister, and you’re not even a little upset?”

Raleigh let out a little laugh, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. “If I know anything about Jazmine, it’s that she probably already took care of the problem.”

\---

Jazmine stayed with them for the next month, and the three of them didn’t exactly avoid the conversation of her circumstances, but somehow it was never fully discussed. If Chuck started muttering about it, Jazmine shut him up. If Raleigh wondered aloud how the baby would be raised, the other two quickly shut down that line of thought because none of them had ever handled babies before. It was suddenly one big house full of people avoiding reality.

When Jazmine’s due date started creeping up on them, and her stomach was far too noticeable to ignore it even hidden under layers of sweaters, Raleigh brought up the fact that ignoring the issue probably wasn’t going to make it go away.

Jazmine glared at him from her spot next to him on the couch. “Hypocrite,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Are you going to start recycling shit I’ve told you?”

Raleigh tilted his head before smiling at her. “Pretty much.”

Jazmine smiled back. She leaned over and rested her head on Raleigh’s shoulder. It could’ve been mistaken for a happy moment, if the next words out of Jazmine’s mouth weren’t, “I don’t think the baby’s a selkie.”

Raleigh’s shoulders tensed. “Why?”

“Because I shifted so many times,” Jazmine exhaled. “And it didn’t feel right—the shift—each time. You’re not supposed to do that, right? At least mom never did. She stayed human through all of her pregnancies.”

Chuck had been sitting on the floor during the ordeal, playing with Max. “That can’t be true for all selkies.” He squinted his eyes. “Surely some people shift while pregnant.”

“Maybe,” Raleigh offered. But Jazmine was shaking her head.

“Nope, not usually.” Jazmine stared at her stomach. “I fucked up,” she muttered.

“No, no you didn’t,” Raleigh insisted. He wrapped an arm around Jazmine’s shoulders. “You did fine. And if the baby is human, we’ll just deal with that.”

Jazmine pursed her mouth. “No.”

Raleigh blinked, staring back at Chuck before looking back at Jazmine. “Why not? You could live here if you wanted.”

“It’s not that.”

Chuck scoffed. “Then enlighten us.”

“You don’t understand. The sea is my _home_ ,” she said lowly.

Chuck blinked up at the two of them. “So what? You’re just going to ditch us with your baby?”

“It’s not like that,” Jazmine insisted. She shook her head. “Raleigh may be perfectly happy with all this ‘happy human lifestyle,’ but that’s not what I want. That’s not what I wanted out of any of this.”

While Raleigh looked like he was attempting to understand and be comforting, Chuck sneered. “Well what did you expect out of it?”

“I expected the father of my kid to not be a fucking huge creep,” Jazmine retorted. She leaned forward, knocking off Raleigh’s arm. “He said he was fine with me being a selkie, I expected that to stay the same. He said he was good with me shifting, I expected that not to change.” She kicked the coffee table, making Raleigh wince and Chuck frown.

While they didn’t talk about a lot of things, it had been established that nobody would be hunting down Jazmine. She might not have told Chuck, but she told her brother, and Raleigh had relayed the bare facts of how her ex-boyfriend was found dead from ‘accidental causes.’ However, neither Chuck nor Raleigh were qualified to raise a baby. “Why don’t you take the kid to the father’s family? They should raise the baby if it’s human.”

Jazmine ran a hand through her hair. “The guy was okay in the beginning, funny, charming, cute but then...” She let out a little breath of air, wringing her hands like she was trying to rein herself in. “But he stole my pelt,” she hissed, like it was the worst crime imaginable, and considering it was part of her identity, it probably was. “And when I demanded it back, he beat me. I can’t leave my kid to the family that raised that sort of person.”

Raleigh placed a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “We’ll take care of the baby.”

Chuck internally screamed. His eyes widened and he could feel his face heating up. There was literally no way the two of them were capable of raising a child. Not a single one of them were qualified to handle an infant.

\---

When the baby was born, it had a little pelt wrapped around it, but it was shifted into a human at the time. Jazmine had insisted on a selkie midwife, and Raleigh had gotten her five days prior. The midwife did ease Jazmine’s fears about her pregnancy, telling her that some people did shift while pregnant and it shouldn’t have too detrimental of an effect on the fetus, but even she wasn’t sure what the baby would be born as. Chuck had wondered if Jazmine would give birth to a squirming little seal pup or a baby, and despite all the questions he threw at Raleigh and Jazmine ahead of time, they hadn’t been able to give a definite answer. Yancy had entered the world as a seal pup, while the two younger siblings both were born with little pelts. The midwife had explained that usually selkie babies were able to be born as either, regardless of what form their parent was in. Stress could induce unfavorable shifts, and it was what made birth so tricky in the ocean. One would think there would be some instinctive stuff that would kick in, but apparently it wasn’t so.

The midwife taught them a few things, but she left a couple of days after the baby was born. However, none of the things the midwife taught them seemed to help when the baby developed colic. Jazmine’s daughter was a sickly baby to begin with, but now she cried and cried until her face turned red. Raleigh and Jazmine and Chuck all tried to soothe her, but nothing worked.

Eventually Chuck went to work just to get out of the house. He knew babies were loud, but that baby could scream. It made him anxious and worried. Babies shouldn’t sound like someone was trying to murder it.

Chuck was halfway onto getting on his boat when he saw his dad. They’d told him about Jazmine’s pregnancy. Had even told him about selkies a year ago, though Herc had just nodded and told him he already knew. It had taken the fun out of it when Herc smiled and said he met Stacker years ago.

“Jazmine had her baby,” Chuck said in lieu of a proper greeting.

His dad nodded. “Want to work with me today?”

“Fine,” Chuck sighed. “Are you going to visit today?”

“If it’s not inconvenient.”

Chuck grinned. “Fair warning, the kid screams like it’s possessed and someone’s performing an exorcism on it.”

\---

As soon as they entered the house, Chuck knew his dad realized that Chuck wasn’t just over exaggerating. Herc paused in the entrance, bracing himself as he closed the door. The baby’s wailing was still going strong. “They’re probably all in the guest room,” Chuck said. Herc gave him a nod and slowly walked there while Chuck headed into the kitchen. Usually dinner was done by now if one of them stayed home, but nothing was ready. Chuck went about starting dinner, heating up scraps for Max and leftovers from yesterday for everyone else, and sat down and waited for Raleigh to frantically dash into the kitchen.

Sure enough, Raleigh eventually appeared. He grinned when he saw the pot of stew on the stove. “Thanks.”

“Mhmm,” Chuck hummed, eyeing Raleigh. “How were Jazmine and the baby today?”

“The baby still has a healthy set of lungs.” Raleigh shrugged. “Jazmine swears there’s a ringing in her ears.”

“Great,” Chuck sighed.

Raleigh sat on the table. If Chuck didn’t know how sturdy the furniture was due to past experiences, he would make a joke about Raleigh being too heavy. Raleigh raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you going to hide in here?”

Chuck shrugged his shoulders. “As tempting as that sounds, I don’t think it would be wise to leave your sister or my dad with an infant.” He stood up, cracking his back as he went. When he passed by Raleigh, Chuck took a step toward Raleigh until Raleigh’s thighs bracketed him in. “That baby never sleeps.” Chuck stared at Raleigh’s lips. “Ever. And I can’t even remember the last time we fucked.”

Raleigh grinned. “Handjobs in the shower, three nights ago.”

“That doesn’t count,” Chuck muttered.

Raleigh tilted his head. “Pretty sure it does.” He leaned forward, enough at least for Chuck to get the hint and meet him halfway in a kiss, but it was broken up by Herc’s pathetic attempt at a lullaby. Raleigh laughed into the crook of Chuck’s neck.

“See what I had to put up with as a kid?” Chuck sighed. “Awful.”

\---

They ended up eating dinner in shifts, with one person keeping the baby company. The midwife had said self-soothing could wait until a little later, but Chuck wasn’t sure if the baby needed to be held or rocked or burped or what. In the beginning the baby mostly slept and then cried whenever she woke up, and whoever was nearest would fix whatever was bugging her. It wasn’t too bad, and the baby quickly settled down. However, now all she seemed to do was scream regardless. Chuck rocked the baby in his arms, trying not to panic from watching her turn red and scrunch up her face.

“Did your parents do anything special when you two were babies?” Herc asked. “Your mum hum or sing or your dad make up a song?”

Jazmine and Raleigh stared at each other. “No,” Jazmine said tentatively. “Nothing other than the usual things?” The side of her mouth ticked, like she was asking Raleigh for clarification. But she was the baby of her family. Likely she was just unaware of it all.

“Our mom sang us songs,” Raleigh acknowledged, “but yeah, nothing other than the norm.” Raleigh stared at Chuck, and then his face lit up. “Well…”

Raleigh walked across the room and opened the trunk with all the pelts and yarn and half-knitted sweaters. After the baby was born, Raleigh had cleaned the baby’s pelt with seawater and tucked it away with his pelt and Jazmine’s. “She sort of prescribed to older traditions, in some regards.”

After setting the pelt down on the bed, Raleigh carefully took the baby from Chuck’s arm. The midwife had taught them how to wrap the baby up tight in a blanket. Raleigh put the baby on top of the pelt, and wrapped her up in that too. The baby hiccupped, and Raleigh carefully picked her up. The baby snuffled into her pelt a few times, and then let out a little yawn.

Jazmine eyed the two of them and let out a snort. As Raleigh went to hand her the baby, Jazmine waved her hands at him. “You hold her for awhile while she sleeps.”

“Did the midwife teach us that?” Chuck asked, annoyed and exasperated at the whole lot of them.

“She didn’t,” Jazmine replied.

\---

It was a week after Jazmine gave birth that she finally settled on Madison for her daughter’s name. Chuck had figured it was a selkie thing—waiting awhile before naming the kid—until Jazmine shrugged and whispered to him that she had been debating on which city to name her kid after. If Chuck were a better person, he would’ve gawked and told her that was a shitty thing to do. Instead he laughed over the fact that Raleigh and Madison shared names with cities they’d probably never visit.

Madison grew up knowing all about the secret of selkies. She knew she had a special pelt. When Raleigh dove from the cliffs, she always held Chuck’s hand. Whenever Chuck told her to, “please be more careful than that,” she grinned at him and told him she couldn’t make those promises. It was a silly thing she must’ve heard one of her dads or Herc say, but she liked repeating it, and it was sort of adorable coming from a three year old.

When she was old enough, barely five, Jazmine and Raleigh taught her how to shift. Raleigh had spent months building Madison her own special pool. He dug a hole on the top of the cliffs, then went ahead and welded metal into an oddly shaped basin, and filled that with sea water, and then started recreating a tide pool in their backyard. A week before Madison’s birthday, Jazmine came to visit. She and Raleigh filled up the makeshift tide pool with sand and rocks and starfish and things.

Jazmine had stayed for a few months after giving birth, but then she left. She visited often, and stayed during the summers. Madison usually called her ‘mom’ or ‘mommy,’ switching between the two depending on her mood, but she tended to cling to Chuck and Raleigh more. It didn’t bother Jazmine that Madison called them both her daddies, but it did pleasantly surprise her every time Madison called Jazmine ‘mommy.’

Together Jazmine and Raleigh taught Madison how to swim first as a human. Chuck complained how cold it was, but Madison ran hot like the rest of them. She didn’t mind the cold, and she picked up swimming pretty easy. She squealed in delight when Raleigh finally brought out her pelt and let her use it in the pool.

Madison loved her pool and would spend all her time in it if she could. Sometimes it made Chuck worry that one day she was going to leave, just like how Raleigh might leave. At the moment, she was still practically a baby, but one day she would grow up.

Madison insisted on covering her pillow with her pelt and talked about all the things she wanted to see and do in the ocean. One day Raleigh would take her into the ocean, and sure Mako and Jazmine would probably be there to protect and teach her, but it made Chuck worry. He’d be left out and forgotten.

Chuck never exactly vocalized these fears. He’d complain about it in a roundabout way, but then Raleigh always kissed him and reminded him that Chuck was loved. If the baby did want to do her whole ‘travel as a selkie’ stuff when she was older, Chuck would accept it. It wasn’t his call on how their kid should live her life. He never understood why his dad always worried so much about him, but as he braided his daughter’s hair or read her a book at night, he thought he understood it just a little bit.

 

 


End file.
